Standing in a car park after escaping with their lives, a group of stunned villagers delivered their message to Vladimir Putin.
"Foreign troops with NATO equipment have entered our land. In a few hours, our city was turned into ruins," one woman says to the camera. "Our children are afraid to go to sleep."
When it's his turn to speak, another man becomes agitated when he talks about state media reports that claimed the situation was under control.
"This is a lie, this is a, lie this is a lie. This allows civilians to die," he says. "There are huge, intense battles."
The four-minute video features dozens of residents from the town of Sudzha, in Russia's Kursk region, about 10 kilometres from the country's border with Ukraine.
It's been two-and-a-half years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In that time, hostilities have — save for isolated missile and drone strikes — been fought almost exclusively on the latter's soil.
Lately, the conflict has been characterised by gruelling, deadly battles in which neither side has been able to make significant inroads into the other's positions.
But last Tuesday brought a surprise counterpunch when Volodymyr Zelenskyy's forces stormed over the border and into Russia from a position hundreds of kilometres behind the front lines.
The move saw local residents flee for their lives and caught Putin and Russia's military top brass off-guard.
In a sign of how unprepared the Kremlin was for the incursion, Ukrainian troops have captured more territory in the days since.
Almost 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the Kursk area, and the local governor says Ukraine now controls 28 settlements, although Zelenskyy this week said that number was 74.
Sudzha was among the first to be seized. Residents who managed to escape have complained about not being able to contact loved ones they left behind.
The video, which was uploaded to the encrypted messaging service Telegram and features displaced Russians appealing directly to Putin, represents an unusually public show of defiance in a country where any criticisms of the leader and military can draw harsh, and swift, punishments.
Some wiped away tears as their neighbours spoke about hearing multiple explosions and fleeing in the middle of the night.
Jaroslava Barbieri, a doctoral researcher specialising in Russia and Ukraine from the University of Birmingham, said the attack had unsettled the Kremlin's leadership.
"We are seeing videos of local residents being very unhappy about what's going on," she said.
"Russia is trying to scramble. Ultimately what we're seeing is that they're quite unprepared, quite nervous about how to handle this, it's quite uncomfortable for them.
"They'll try to push the narrative that they are containing it. But you can see they [Russian officials] are nervous about how to frame the situation and the developments on the ground."
Attack 'brings war home to Russians'
Russian state media coverage detailing the surprise invasion has been bullish, claiming the situation is under control and that the Russian troops are retaking ground.
But even the Kremlin's mouthpieces have had to yield a little.
In a report that aired on Channel One Russia this week, military correspondent Semyon Pegov gave viewers the thumbs-up and said the mood among troops was "positive".
"However, this does not mean the crisis is completely over," conceded the well-known blogger and propagandist, who claims Ukraine had been trying to hack Russian communications in the area.
In a separate story on the same channel, another reporter said the situation "continues to be difficult" for Russian forces.
He said volunteers from Moscow — which is more than 500km away — had turned up in evacuation centres in surrounding regions to help.
The exact situation on the ground is fluid. Russian officials have outlined an area of roughly 500 square kilometres that "the enemy" controls, although Ukraine claims it has taken double that.
On Monday, Putin said Zelenskyy's military, "with the help of its Western masters", had invaded his country in an attempt to improve its negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks.
Russian authorities have said about 2,000 civilians remain in the occupied area, with little known about their fate.
The country's defence ministry earlier this week claimed it had destroyed 35 Ukrainian tanks, 31 armoured personnel carriers, 18 infantry fighting vehicles, and 179 other armoured vehicles since the invasion began last Tuesday — numbers the ABC has not been able to independently verify.
Videos on Telegram show captured Russian soldiers in the area blindfolded and held at gunpoint, being ordered to pledge allegiance to Ukraine.
"The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories," Putin said on Monday.
Zelenskyy has described the invasion as a matter of Ukrainian security, because Russia had used the area to launch missiles, while the White House has said it had no prior knowledge of the plans.
What could Ukraine be trying to achieve?
Ms Barbieri said there were multiple possible motivations for Ukraine to invade Russia.
Among them could be improving its negotiating position for any peace talks, disrupting Putin's supply lines and military logistics, and protecting its own border communities, which have been subjected to barrages of drone and missile strikes.
"There's also a number of more political goals, and quite explicitly, the incursion destabilises the domestic situation in Russia," she said.
"It essentially brings the war home to the Russian population and, in a way, exposes the Kremlin's vulnerabilities and incompetence in handling this."
She described the decision to cross the Russian border as a "high-risk gamble".
"We've seen also that they are trying to build fortifications," she said.
"That might indicate that they're thinking of holding onto this territory for some time, but it remains unclear currently the extent to which they would be able, even willing to sustain, long-term incursions."
Dr David Blagden, from the University of Exeter's Strategy and Security Institute, said Ukraine seemed to have used some of its best forces in the invasion, and that could come at a cost.
"Ultimately, all strategic choices entail trade-offs. The operation has thus far been notably successful, damaging domestic perceptions of the Putin regime's competence among the affected Russian communities and forcing Moscow to divert forces — albeit perhaps not as many as Kyiv would like — in a bid to stall Ukraine's offensive," he said.
"Yet the personnel, equipment, and logistics demands of attempting to sustain the incursion then hold the taken territory will be significant, especially as supply lines lengthen, and thus potentially detrimental to the Ukrainian war effort on other fronts."
